{"id":48510,"date":"2019-09-17T06:57:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T11:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48510"},"modified":"2019-09-17T06:57:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T11:57:43","slug":"we-are-all-hostages-of-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48510","title":{"rendered":"We are all hostages of 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are all hostages of 9\/11<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After years of reporting on the Great War on Terror, many questions behind the US attacks remain unresolved<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pakistanis raise their weapons in the border town of Bajour as they shout anti-US slogans before leaving for Afghanistan in October 2001. Thousands from this tribal area go to join the Taliban in its \u2018holy war\u2019 against the US. Photo: AFP \/Tariq Mahmood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afghanistan was bombed and invaded because of 9\/11. I was there from the start, even before 9\/11. On August 20, 2001, I interviewed <\/a>commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the \u201cLion of the Panjshir,\u201d who told me about an \u201cunholy alliance\u201d of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the ISI (Pakistani intel).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in Peshawar, I learned that something really big was coming: my article was published<\/a> by Asia Times on August 30. Commander Massoud was killed on September 9: I received a terse email from a Panjshir source, only stating, \u201cthe commander has been shot.\u201d Two days later, 9\/11 happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, the day before, none other than Osama bin Laden, in person, was in a Pakistani hospital<\/a> in Rawalpindi, receiving treatment, as CBS reported. Bin Laden was proclaimed the perpetrator already at 11am on 9\/11 \u2013 with no investigation whatsoever. It should have been not exactly hard to locate him in Pakistan and \u201cbring him to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2001 I was in Tora Bora tracking bin Laden \u2013 under B-52 bombers and side by side with Pashtun mujahideen. Later, in 2011, I would revisit<\/a> the day bin Laden vanished forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One year after 9\/11, I was back in Afghanistan for an\u00a0in-depth investigation<\/a>\u00a0of the killing of Massoud. By then it was possible to establish a Saudi connection: the letter of introduction for Massoud\u2019s killers, who posed as journalists, was facilitated by commander Sayyaf, a Saudi asset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are all hostages of 9\/11 After years of reporting on the Great War on Terror, many questions behind the US attacks remain unresolved Pakistanis raise their weapons in the border town of Bajour as they shout anti-US slogans before leaving for Afghanistan in October 2001. Thousands from this tribal area go to join the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[2487,3429,4076,18938,827],"class_list":["post-48510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-afghanistan","tag-osama-bin-laden","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-the-saker-blog","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48511,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48510\/revisions\/48511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}